


The Shades of your skin

by IAmNotOneOfThem



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magically appearing tattoos, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Seriously there is so much symbolism and I'm not even explaining it, Slowly Growing Relationship, Symbolism, Tattoos, You have to figure it out on your own
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmNotOneOfThem/pseuds/IAmNotOneOfThem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>What if tattoos just randomly appeared on our skin during key points in our life, and we'd have to figure out what they mean for ourselves?</i>
</p><p>James' skin was full of scars, wounds and tattoos, of death, dying love and tragedy. There was death, so much death, but something else, something new. What did <b>sagax</b> mean, and why was it on his skin?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Spies and the Butterflies

The first tattoo was supposed to be the one that led to a brave, new world. 

Something a child told their parents about, exited, with the same light shining in their eyes as those illuminating huge, wide ones at Christmas, when they found their presents under the tree, sentimental, soft music playing in the background while the parents told each other _You shouldn't have bought me something, I told you not to!_.

It was a step towards growing-up and something for parents to be proud of – a child and their first tattoo. Something stupid, of no importance, like a child finding a tattoo of a ballet shoe after joining a dancing club.

A soccer ball for a boy, a horse after the first gifted one by the parents a dog; words, sometimes, written with wisdom a child did not possess. Ink right under the first layer of skin, there for eternity, showing things others weren't supposed to know. A child did not know such things.

A child ran around and showed their friends their tattoo, bathed in the praises and the envy, grinned proudly as others poked the skin and _is it real_?

A parent told their friends about the progress (”My poor boy, they grow up so quickly”). They smiled, drank tea, and passed around pictures of the tattoo; colourful lines or black ink on pale skin, next to fading bruises from a fall off the tree in the garden. A child smiling proudly into the camera.

_Epistula non erubescit._

The letter doesn't blush, paper is patient. And so was ink, and time itself. Patient, honest, hated.

James' first tattoo was nothing to be proud of.

Nothing to show around, nothing to let others see, and nothing to take pictures of. It was ugly. Black, simple lines - a symbol of nothing but **death**.

It was nothing he could show his parents, because it had appeared the day they died.

Kincade had been the one attempting to reassure him, not the police. Not some kind of authority saying that everything would be alright. _(“We'll give you a home and someone who’ll take care of you. Don't you worry, child.”)_

James hadn’t wanted to hear anything of the sort; didn’t want to hear their lies, their faked promises, their smiles and kind gestures and _he did not want it_.

He’d stayed hidden for two days, eventually coming out only because hunger had overtaken him and he had stopped crying. The boy who had entered the room did not leave it again, but someone new, someone else had been there.

And on his arm, there had been a tattoo.

There were lessons about symbolism and people offering to sell their services in helping others to decipher their tattoos. It was rare for a tattoo to show something obvious, and there was always a hidden meaning behind everything, though there was hardly anything philosophical or symbolic behind a skull, or a gun for a soldier.

Children had to ask their parents sometimes, but James did not have a parent to ask and Kincade hadn't been there with him, so he’d had to figure it out on his own.

There were two broken chain-links on his lower arm, almost above his wrists, his pulse. Broken. It hadn't been hard to tell what they’d meant, and for a child who had just lost his parents, it was even more apparent.

He had lost his parents. Now it was time to move on, and leave the broken behind.

_(Later, he’d found out that his father had a tattoo of a rifle on his shoulder, and his mother the key of a piano on the index finger of her left hand. He’d promised himself that he would get one similar to his father's, because it meant he had done something in his life, and had served his country.)_

Later, he joined the Navy, and his second tattoo appeared - a symbol of a ship on his right shoulder. He’d expected to feel pride, but he passed out that night after three bottles of cheep alcohol, salty, mixed with his tears.

One met people with visible tattoos all the time; some on their face, the tattoo of a teardrop on someone's eye, or the corners of one's mouth tattooed to appear longer. A permanent smile.  
The broken people were those always smiling, not those crying their eyes out - James would know.

People working in espionage - like James did after a few years _(a woman with a cold, unmoving expression, eyes staring at Bond, words whispered about espionage, about agents, MI6 and the loss of one's civilian life, a gun in a human, a human functioning as a gun, and a handshake done within a blink of an eye, like a deal with the devil and the only thing he’d lost had been his soul, which had already been in pieces)_ of working on a ship, of saving people who did not need to be saved - hated their tattoos and tried to get rid of them.

They were like a direct view into one's soul - a window; and how was a spy supposed to hide who he or she was when it was written on their skin?

Years after he’d started to work for MI6, James received his third tattoo, the first whose purpose was not immediately obvious.

It was an anchor. Old, heavy metal, of bleak colour, dull, with its tines curled up high enough to almost form a 'W', right above his heart on his chest; bigger than the ship, bigger than the tattoo on his wrist, a crown at its top.

Someone suggested that he go and let a professional have a look at it, to try and see if he or she would be able to figure it out, but James preferred to keep his cards close to his chest. He tried his best to ignore it and instead went on with his life, coming up with stories about sailing and a broken love whenever a mark he took to bed asked him about it.

It was somehow ironic that James' fourth tattoo represented a poker chip, and that his fifth was a glass filled with wine: red, dark. A beautiful liquor for a beautiful, unique woman.

There had been so many deaths in James' life, too many scars on his body. A history of pain, harm, violence, and a fool who thought himself nothing more than a shell - a tool. Then again, he was nothing but, at least not for MI6, and not for M.

Oh no, especially not for M. Cold, uncaring M, with eyes like steel - blue and nearly as bright as James' own. M, whose heart had long ago stopped beating. M, who’d known that she had owned his loyalty, was the mistress of it, and whose commands were followed to a higher degree than the Quartermaster's or anyone else's. 

_The bitch._

Glass was unmoving. Cold, smooth underneath fingers, smooth underneath lips, solid and fragile, but strong enough to not break by a mere touch, and James had made the mistake of thinking that maybe, for once, death would stay away and leave him be.

He’d been wrong.

Death took its next victim, another puppet in the endless act of death, tragedy and alcohol, and her name was Vesper Lynd.

Beautiful, traitorous Vesper.

Dark as the evening she was named after, with a red moon tattooed on her left shoulder and a knife on the inside of her thigh, a symbol Bond had always chosen to ignore, washed out of his memory when she had smiled at him, warm and loving and lulling, hypnotising.

Eyes sometimes green, sometimes blue. Hair dark, face hard, skin smooth like glass, and lips as red as wine, with a body and curves to die for, and a smile worth falling for.

In the end, all he’d said was, "The bitch is dead," feeling as though he could still taste her lips on his own, still taste the wine on his tongue and feel her skin beneath his rough hands.

Could still feel her lips on his hands, her cheek, see the sparkle in her eyes that haunted him, even years later because he still did not know what it had meant - if it had been victorious or an apology.

But the moment he had seen her eyes fall closed, her body loosing all resistance against the current, something inside him had broken.

And so had the glass on his chest, a bit below his heart, beneath the anchor and the crown. It had broken, and the liquid was gone. Gone like Vesper's life and her smile and her eyes, and gone was the traitor he had fallen for.

James' sixth tattoo was in simple, black letters, in handwriting so painfully similar to Vesper's that he’d tried to cut it out of his skin and off his bones, to no avail.

 _Love but never trust_ , written on his neck. Four words revealing more of the truth than he could ever have understood.

James’ seventh tattoo wasn't really his seventh, just another added to the growing number he’d already possessed. He had never paid attention to it, not really, but it wasn't hard to miss as he woke up, pain from his right shoulder making him groan and wince, cold hands pressing him down onto softness again.

The shot was clear in his memory; quick, painful, and then the fall. He remembered how it had felt to hit the surface of the water and the stones beneath, remembered the irony in the situation as he had drowned, an unmoving body out of which blood was seeping, red rising as he had sunk down.

He had no idea how he had survived. Perhaps death just didn’t like him, or perhaps hell was too good for him and he was cursed with a life filled with death and resurrection with more and more butterflies on his throat, each one too colourful in his opinion, too bright in his eyes.

There had been two, and after Skyfall, there were three.

The new one was red: red like the fire of the explosion, red like the pictures of the virus he was later shown, red like the angry signs of 'Security Breach' behind his back as he ran to catch the man who had nearly thrown the whole of the UK into chaos with a computer.

James drank. He drank and fucked and tried to destroy his liver, probably successfully, for days.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and a day after he’d been found, right after the shot, he found his eighth tattoo, after making sure the bullet wound was stitched and uninfected. That would have been a cruel kind of death, even for him.

Perhaps it was a bit surreal, a bit naive, but part of him hoped to die with a bullet to his brain or an explosion breaking his body apart - something quick, less painful than bleeding, drowning, or dying from an infection like a bloody civilian.

The death of a hero, which he was not and had never been.

His eighth tattoo was a crown right above the bullet wound, and a woman he took to bed pointed out that a crown meant that he had triumphed over death. Just another resurrection, James had thought, and fucked her into the mattress mercilessly.

As he saw the explosion, James had felt his pathetic loyalty towards Queen and Country rise like bile inside his throat, and he’d decided it was time for a hobby.

His was resurrection, and later rat hunting.

James' ninth tattoo was a stag on his back, and it hadn't taken a genius to realise what it stood for.

But he’d also finally realised what the anchor meant, and he’d wished he didn't.

Holding M in his arms, tears running over his cheeks and reminding him of his own humanity - _You are human, you fool, human, and you care too much_ \- the realisation brought up so much pain and desperation that he still was crying even as they were found.

It shouldn't have surprised him, but he still caught himself staring at it once, lost in thought in front of his mirror, eyes trailing the hard, metallic lines across his chest, right above his heart. 

And it was so obvious, so painfully obvious. And it hurt.

James punched the mirror, watched as shards rained down, felt blood pour out off his wounds, and thought with a bitter laugh that this was his life, right in front of his naked feet. His life, cutting through the skin of them as he walked indifferently through the pieces, the pain itself cutting through something indescribable, more of a relief than a bother.

It allowed him to think clearly.

Another butterfly appeared on his neck, right after he’d somehow managed to survive an explosion, and that night he screamed at the heavens to _finally let him die_.

There was nothing left to live for; no mystery to solve, no love, no parents nor family, nothing. No M, only a poor excuse called Mallory, the bastard. No Vesper. Simply nothing.

That was, until one day after showering, he found his tenth tattoo, and once again had no idea what it was supposed to mean.

In clean, controlled handwriting - not like Vesper's, anything but hers - there was a word on his wrist, right hand, above the pulse.

 _Sagax_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta-read by dawn-phoenix, thank you so much!


	2. Another mission, another day

_"Double-oh-seven, report._

"There currently are five men shooting at me, so if you'd have the decency to wait for a moment?"

James' hand shot up, trigger being pulled in the moment the barrel aimed for the Russian's head. Blood spilled, the sound of a scream echoing in the hall as James dodged a blow to his stomach, sliding over the ground slick with blood and water.

The rain had long ago soaked his suit, and he was sure that the blood on his skin wasn't his only, but there were more important things to take care of now, he thought, hearing the distinctive _crack_ of bones breaking as he shoved his gun into a man's face.

Turning around, James shot once or twice, not paying attention to the amount of bullets he spent.

He imagined Q sitting at his desk, drinking coffe with his eyebrows narrowed, clockwork gear almost wrinkled from the focused expression. It was a glance James remembered even now, in the middle of a mission. As annoyed as arrogant, and as experienced as faked.

Hitting the third one on the head with a chair he simply lifted and threw at him, James pressed a finger against the earpiece, going behind the next corner for a bit of safety.

"How can I help you today, Q?"

There was a snort coming from the earpiece, quality not as good as James was used to, but bearable. _"You could start with how the bloody hell you managed to get yourself in a situation like this."_

"I only did what I was told to", James said, going around the corner again with his gun raised, pulling the trigger and watching how one of them went down, "I went to the target's house and shot him."

_"You could have disactivated the alert system first, or make sure that there aren't five guards within hearing range."_

James spared a short, chaste glance towards the target - a man, hardly older than James himself, but whose hair was already grey, in a suit which was soaked with blood, throat cut open - on the floor, before he went back to trying to find the last one of the five guards.

Q was right, actually.

James should have paid more attention to the mission and the surroundings, but he had been in a hurry. This country was cold, and far too snowy, and like every sane Britishman, he would prefer the rainy weather of London over this icy hell.

He was one of those believing that, would the world ever go down, then it would disappear in ice, and not flames, but a bit of fire would be quite entertaining, fun to watch.

Forcing his trail of thoughts back to the mission again, the agent hardly managed to get behind a few boxes in time to avoid being shot in the head, only feeling the gust of wind as it missed him by a few inches.

"Do tell, Q, what does the tattoo of a skelleton mean in a person's face?"

There was silence for a moment, the typing of keys audible. _"I'd take an educated guess, if I were you, double-oh-seven."_

James rolled his eyes and carefully looked around the corner, seeing a glimpse of a gun shining in the light of those ridiculous big chandelier at the ceiling. He lifted his own, shooting at a vase to trigger a reaction.

"Perhaps it means that he'll die?", James suggested, hiding again to reload his gun, empty bullets falling on the ground with soft clicking, "That would be a sign of my liking."

As he lifted the gun again, his glance fell on his right wrist, or to be more precise the word written on it, in this black, unremoveable and eternal black. _Sagax._

It had appeared months ago, he assumed, never having been one to check his body daily for any marks or new tattoos. He had only noticed it recently, those black, thin lines were quite easy to miss and overlook, and it was a language he didn't speak.

Google image search gave him the picture of some kind of fish, and further searching would require an interest James simply didn't have.

What did he care about this, about tattoos and their meaning, he had to get the job done and that was it. Between shooting, fucking, killing and drinking, there wasn't much space left for something as deep and creative as spending hours sitting in front of the mirror, trying to figure out what those five letters in this order meant.

He hadn't tried to find out what the anchor meant either, and he still did not regret it.

_"You haven't moved from the spot in three minutes, double-oh-seven, is something wrong?"_

Q's voice made James flinch and he turned around the corner, gun lifted, aiming for what he assumed was the other's head. One quick pull at the trigger, a shot, the body hit the floor with a _thump_.

James didn't lower his gun and instead walked up the stairs, checking for any survivors or hidden ways of getting out. He had the order to kill everyone, and he would do as he had been told.

A mission was a mission, after all.

"Done", he said into his earpiece, putting his gun away and ripping a piece of fabric off his suit, using it to apply pressure on a wound at his shoulder. He saw the sail of his tattoo, sparing it a short glance before he walked out of the building.

Blending out the noise of typing in his ear, of keys being hit abnormally fast, James got into the car waiting for him, telling the cabbie to head straight back to his hotel.

His flight would go in five hours, meaning he had to somehow waste two without getting himself killed, nor loosing his equipment - he had a bet going on with Q, and he would win it, despise his own wonder.

_"Are you on your way back to the hotel?"_

"Yes, I am, Q", James answered, taking a phone out to hold it over his ear. There was no need to confuse the cabbie, and the woman getting into the cab right next to him, heading in the same direction as James, so it only was convenient and polite to let her in too. "I should be there within a few minutes."

 _"Your flight goes in five hours, don't forget it. The next would go tomorrow."_ Q typed something, and James imagined how his fingers flew over the keys, the codes tattoo-ed on his fingertips and up his arms moving in time with those on the screen. _"Are you wounded?"_

"My, someone could think you are worried."

James turned his head slightly into the woman's direction, regarding her pretty dress and her red, fire-like hair. He smiled, and she returned it shyly.

_"Just answer the bloody question."_

"Not that bad. I shall see you again in Britain, if you'd excuse me?"

_"Double-oh-seven-"_

James lowered the phone and took the earpiece out in a fluid motion, deactivating it and putting it in his pocket. He practically could feel the annoyance radiating from Q from where he was, miles away from Britain. Poor minions.

Leaning back into the seat, James once again looked at the woman next to him, and shot her a charming grin.

Half an hour later, he could hear her high-pitched voice deepened by lust and being huskier than her usual as she moaned, arching her back and pressing her breasts against his chest, nails leaving scratch-marks all on his back as he fucked her into the bed of his hotel room, her legs around his waist.

Her skin was full of tattoos, of roses and flowers, stings trailing up her hips to her breasts, circling them almost lovingly.

She had been used by men before, he figured out as his body went into auto-pilot, making her come before he did on his own, nothing telling that he was exhausted, nothing showing the sting of pain in his chest.

He fucked her roughly, and desperate, and left bruises on her hips and on her neck, biting into her flesh, not drawing blood, but leaving behind marks and making her cry out in pain mistaken for pleasure.

As he came, James saw stars, felt hands on his skin, heard a voice whisper, rolling the _R_ far too strongly, an accent he recognised but couldn't put a finger on at the moment.

For a moment, he thought he saw a face, saw curls and green eyes sparkling, pupils blown, but it was already gone again as he opened his eyes, looking into the face of a red-headed, curvy woman, without curls and with brown eyes.

She fell asleep soon after and James got up, packed his case and left her alone, paying for the room.

It wasn't his business what she would do, and if he had seen another flower blossom, another rose growing between the ones she already had, he ignored it. Tattoos were so easy to read, he thought in the cab bringing him to the airport, twenty minutes before he had to be there, and they made someone weak.

His glance fell down on the one on his wrist again, and a bit angrily he pulled the sleeve of his suit above it.

_"Double-oh-seven, report."_

"On my way to the airport, Q."

_"I'll expect you in Britain in six hours, double-oh-seven. Don't die on your way there."_

James smirked to himself. "One might think you are worried, Q."

There was no reply, and James took the earpiece out again, putting it somewhere in a pocket of his jacket.

Only now he realised that his heart beat faster than usually, and he somehow knew it was neither from adrenaline, nor from the climax he had have a few minutes ago, but from something else.

James closed his eyes and ignored the feeling, focused on the ride instead.


End file.
